


and there was a kid with a head full of doubt (so i’ll scream until i die and the last of those bad thoughts are finally out)

by transgirluma (gayapplewhite)



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Also Aziz Is P Much A Cooler Version Of Nino Lahiff Let's Not Lie To Ourselves, Family Drama, Gen, The Doug Meta Fic I Spent Like Four Months On, Underage Drinking, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 19:58:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13442244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayapplewhite/pseuds/transgirluma
Summary: “high school would be a bit easier to navigate if he had friends, he realizes after a while, instead of acquaintances who asked him rude questions about his bracelets and where the nearest mine was, and if they could get rich. (he'd gotten so tired of it that after a week, he'd taken his bracelets off and hidden them in a drawer. dwarves could not take them off, but his fathers had thought it too cruel to bind their children to a tradition they were not born into). he felt bad, but it was easier this way. and one night, on a bit of a whim, doug finds himself standing in front of jane's dorm...”or; doug and auradon.





	and there was a kid with a head full of doubt (so i’ll scream until i die and the last of those bad thoughts are finally out)

**Author's Note:**

> this may or may not be the longest fic i've ever written for this fandom. i'm very sorry. this is the Superior Version(tm) of doug i've had in my head for ages, and finally managed to write about. the jane as an empath idea still belongs to screaminginternallyalleternity over on tumblr, and also tyrone and angie are technically not ocs by the barest of standards (tyrone is in the background dancers for “did i mention”; his jersey had his name on it, and angie is from school of secrets. she's in the tea party, and she cuts anxilen's hair free). krista is an oc (daughter of kristoff and anna), and ronnie is also, but he belongs to evieoftheisle over on tumblr. anissa is ariel's niece in school of secrets (the online series, not the books). also jane's roommate is my other oc, who is the daughter of meg and hercules named helen. 
> 
> also, for ref, drugi / dad is dopey, dorthe / doc is papa, hadumar / happy is aba, gunther / grumpy is fadir, steffen / sleepy is pupa, strom / tatah is sneezy, and bannan / bashful is baba. ik it's confusing it confused me too. 
> 
> the title is from the avett brother's “head full of doubt / road full of promise” and i cannot tell you all the songs i listened to while writing this because it's been a wip since october. anyway please please please i am begging you comment on this if you like it i need the validation because this fic is a monster.

doug's first day at auradon prep is a bit chaotic. it is not due to a lack of preparation, but there is simply only so much preparation one can do for a tour group that consists of seven dwarves, a fourteen year old, a twelve-year old, an eleven-year old, and a two-year old in a small enclosed space. not to mention fairy godmother's assumed lack of experience in the area. dwarves spring out of the ground, fully formed. as such, dwarves as a whole do not have children, and because of that, they do not tend to find themselves in any form of formal secondary education (or, for the matter, primary education), which meant this was a new experience for all parties involved. on move in day, doug's fathers bustle into his dorm, greeting his roommate (apparently a prince named aziz, whose parents had come and gone a few days earlier, having gotten permission to drop their son off early due to the scheduling conflicts that come with being the sultana of agrabah), and working to unpack the boxes doug had meticulously (and then, later, not so meticulously) packed. there had been so much hustle and bustle that it feels almost weirdly empty once they are gone and it is only doug and aziz left.

the silence in the room is interrupted by a knock on the door. doug opens it, only to find that fairy godmother had come to help him schedule classes and to finish filling out his paperwork (it is inevitable, in a house with seven fathers and four children, one under the age of five, that things would go awry with paperwork. doug knows for certain that there was soup spilled on at least three of his forms. this was not one accident. there are at least three different kinds of soup). and it is then that doug realizes exactly how much humans (and fairies, it seems) do not understand the nature of dwarves.

“can i have your name, please?” she asks, sitting at his desk. doug is sitting on his newly-made bed with a quilted comforter in a deep, forest green his papa had bought on his last trading visit. “and your father's name?”

“douglas gruneluten. and um, dwarves tend to live in clans,” he says. this is true. dwarves live in clans, where each dwarf has many romantic partners and most do not tend to commit to marriages at all, if ever. this is, of course, after they spring, fully formed but not yet fully matured, at the human equivalent of eighteen years of age, out of the earth. it is pointless to say that this whole childbearing thing was new to his fathers, as it is obvious to anyone looking in that it was. there were a few bumps and bruises along the way, but nothing that left doug permanently injured or maimed, and from what he remembers, his childhood was a happy one. he has three younger siblings — henry, greta and dodie. he spouts most of these details off to fairy godmother, whose smile never wavers but nonetheless looks as though she's getting bored.

“can i have your full name again please?” she asks, voice cheerier than even his aba in the morning, which was a feat in itself, he thinks. the a-little-too-wide-to-be-true grin is still plastered across her face.

“douglas amadeus gruneleuten,” doug recites.

“so you're dopey's son?” she asks after that, pen poised over a different form in the pile of paperwork.

“actually, his name is drugi gruneleuten,” doug says, a bit annoyed, because nothing bothers his fathers than the nicknames snow had called them being used by people who weren't her. not everyone was a traumatized fourteen year old girl, and his fathers did not tend to appreciate being called by an aspect of their personality by everyone who wasn't their sort-of adopted daughter. snow was allowed to do it, but she was _snow_. “and he's not my only father. they're all — they're all my fathers. like i said, dwarves live in clans. they're all — do you need their names? they're dorthe, hadumar, gunther, steffen, strom, and bannan, all with the last name gruneleuten, and — ” (doug has a list written down by his dad for paperwork. he doesn't really remember their names, having called them dad, papa, baba, aba, fadir, pupa, and tatah, respectively, since he was young).

fairy godmother clears her throat a bit too loudly. “there really is no protocol for having seven fathers on one's paperwork,” she says, still smiling cheerfully, her expression unchanged. “auradon is fairly traditional, as these things go. so let's just say you're dopey's son, yeah?”

doug nods, too shocked to say anything other than to agree. he waits as she fills out the rest of the paperwork. he provides short answers, and she eventually finishes up, having gotten the hint, and leaves, which left him alone in his room. or, well. he would have been alone, had aziz not been sitting on his bed with a pair of headphones on. doug's mind is spinning as he imagines a thousand things he could have done differently. there is some kind of profound ache in his stomach, deep in his soul, when he thinks about people seeing his paperwork and thinking he was “dopey's” son.

aziz notices him, sitting on his bed, staring into nothingness. “hey, don't worry about it,” he says, snapping doug out of his thoughts. aziz pulls his headphones off and leaves them to rest around his neck. “she's a kelbeh, anyhow. gave my baba and mama jaheem about me coming early. she didn't seem to understand that you can't ‘reschedule diplomatic relations with china’.”

doug laughs, despite himself. even he (and he is by far not a diplomat, he is the son of some dwarves whose only real talent is music) knows that diplomatic meetings are to be upheld, and that other obligations could be moved. aziz lays down on his bed, facing the ceiling, arm folded under his head. “doesn't matter. she caved eventually. not like she had much choice.” he chuckles, then looks over at doug, who is fiddling with his bracelets. “what're those?”

“these?” doug asks, fiddling casually with the bracelet on his left wrist.

aziz laughs in response. “no, ghabi, i'm asking about the birds on the windowsill.” doug immediately looks to the windowsill. there are no birds. aziz bursts into laughter, laughing so hard he almost falls off the bed. “yes those,” he wheezes, and doug can feel his cheeks heat up. dwarves don't have a concept of sarcasm, and sarcasm is one of those things doug has never quite understood about human interactions.

“yeah, sarcasm, got it,” doug mutters. “dwarves don't really have that.”

aziz stops laughing. “wait, they don't?” he asks, a mild look of concern across his face. “sorry, man, didn't mean to make fun. but for real, though. what are those bracelets for?”

“oh. yeah. those. um, bracelets in dwarven culture symbolize the kind of metal in your soul. each dwarf is born a metal in their soul and two bracelets on their wrist. and they, um. they grow with the dwarf? they're old magick, and no one really understands it,” doug says. he isn't really used to talking about his bracelets. he hadn't been around other people enough for them to ask, and his fathers had explained it to his siblings.

“neat,” aziz replies. “what does the metal mean? i mean, not that it has to mean something,” he clarifies quickly. “it just seems like that would make sense.”

“the metals show your occupation. um, my dads all have iron because they're all miners, and my sister greta has titanium, because she's going to be a warrior, and i have bronze because i'm going to be a bard, just like my sister dodie, except she's going to be a storyteller we think rather than a bard, because bronze fits both those categories. and the gems show what traits you'll have. like, look, see? that's an emerald for trickery and cunning, a ruby for loyalty, and a pearl for adventurousness,” doug explains. “and those tree branches you can see show which clan i'm from. my fathers are all that is left of the grunehold clan, so you can see the branches of the grunehold engraved on mine. and other dwarves from other places might have different engravings. like i met a merchant from the uhrtock clan once, and she had the äerdhär on hers.”

“that's pretty cool,” aziz says, sounding a bit in awe. “but what's grunehold? i aced geography and i've never even heard of it.”

“yeah. right. you call that the enchanted forest, i think? the dwarven clans call it grunehold, and according to my fadir, ‘we've called it grunehold long before the first humans so much as crawled, and have no intention of changing our name for it simply because humans have come along and decided to call it something else.’”

aziz laughs. “makes sense to me, man. tell your fadir i'm on his side.”

doug smiles at aziz, and realizes it's the first real smile he's ever given another human who wasn't his sibling. “i'll let him know.”

 

//

 

doug's classes start two days after move in. he has two classes with aziz (magical theory i, which is something everyone is required to take, and chinese), and all of his classes with a group of three people who are in his so called “core”. this core exists to allow you to become familiar with certain people in each of your classes so that you will feel a bit more comfortable at school in general. this is a good idea in theory, but not in practice, doug thinks, after three weeks of school have passed, and he has exchanged a total of six words with the people in his core group. his core consists of ronnie radcliffe, who perpetually smells like a wet dog (doug has nothing against him for this. it's just something that he supposes happens when you live with a hundred-some dogs), a girl named anissa, who is related to queen ariel, somehow, but doug doesn't know exactly how and hasn't managed to get up the courage to ask, and a girl named jane who looks like she's going to cry every time she's called upon in class. doug realizes she’s fairy godmother’s kid about three weeks into school when someone sneers at her and calls her “fairy goddaughter” after she messes up in debate class for the third time in one week.

high school would be a bit easier to navigate if he had friends, he realizes after a while, instead of acquaintances who asked him rude questions about his bracelets and where the nearest mine was, and if they could get rich. (he'd gotten so tired of it that after a week, he'd taken his bracelets off and hidden them in a drawer. dwarves could not take them off, but his fathers had thought it too cruel to bind their children to a tradition they were not born into). he felt bad, but it was easier this way. and one night, on a bit of a whim, doug finds himself standing in front of jane's dorm (he finds it by asking aziz, who asks his core-mate lonnie, who somehow knows, despite no one having talked to jane since school started. girls, doug thinks, are somehow magical in that regard). he knocks, and he can hear some shuffling behind the door and jane opens the door, with no roommate anywhere in sight, though clothes that look decidedly un-jane are scattered across the floor, and there's a purple comforter with golden embellishments on one of the beds, so he knows she's real. jane's eyes are swollen and a bit red. it looks almost as though she's been crying, he thinks. huh.

“can i come in?” doug asks, and jane nods. he takes a seat on the floor, where it looks as though jane has been sitting judging by the amount of papers scattered across the floor. neither of them speak for few moments, and then, jane breaks the silence.

“why'd you come to see me?” she asks. “you don't like me. no one does.” her voice breaks, and doug wants nothing more in that moment than to hug her.

“i don't _not_ like you,” doug clarifies. “i just don't know you, that's all.”

“oh,” jane sniffles. neither of them says anything again for another long moment.

“why do you want to be friends with me?” jane asks, and doug's response is almost instinctual.

“because you're a fairy,” he says. “and i'm a sort-of dwarf. and us magickal beings have to stick together.”

jane sniffles again, and then laughs. “what do you mean, sort-of dwarf?” she asks.

“i'm adopted,” doug says. “they found me outside one summer night. i wasn't crying, or weeping, or sleeping — just lying there in a basket, and took me in. and i have the bracelets of a real dwarf, because my fathers decided they'd be damned if their children weren't raised as dwarves, but i'm not, you know. an actual dwarf. which, you know, explains the height thing,” he adds, gesturing at himself. he's much taller than the average dwarf, by about a foot and a half, which puts him much taller than his fathers.

“makes sense,” jane says, a small smile painted across her face. and then, she blurts, “is it rude to ask about your bracelets? because i'm sorry. where'd they go, anyways?”

“a little,” doug says. “don't worry about it, though.” jane's inquiry had been one of the more polite ones he'd gotten, and he'd honestly forgotten she'd done it until she mentioned it. “and i took them off. got tired of the questions.”

“i know the feeling,” she mutters, and then, louder, says. “let's start over,” as she's holding her hand out for him to shake. “i'm jane lilium,” she said. “fairy.”

“i'm doug gruneluten, sort-of dwarf.” he takes her hand and shakes it. her hand is a little bit moist, but not in an unpleasant way. “nice to meet you.”

 

//

 

from then on, doug has friends. well, if by friends, you meant his roommate (who was sort-of honor bound to be his friend) and jane, who he got breakfast with every morning (she didn't quite do the whole sleep thing, and doug had a pretty rigorous internal alarm system due to living with seven fathers who all got up at dawn every morning and were not particularly quiet, so they always ended up the first people in the cafeteria for breakfast), and jordan, who was aziz's pretty-much-adopted sibling and hung around enough in their room that doug felt comfortable calling her his friend. it’s nice, doug thinks. having friends who aren’t his own flesh and blood. it’s different, being around _actual_ humans (nevermind that jordan is a djinn and that jane is a full-blooded fairy. they are closer to humans and act more like humans than his fathers ever did), but it’s nice. there’s things like sarcasm and dancing (which jane tries endlessly to teach him, even though he’s sure by now he’s hopeless at it), and doug likes it. the hustle and bustle of the halls reminds him of home, and if he doesn’t think too hard about how light his wrists feel without his bracelets, he can almost pretend he’s happy.

 

//

 

doug visits his family over the winter holidays, and there is something calming about being back in the hustle and bustle of his childhood home. he brings aziz and jordan with him, since grunehold is a far sight closer than agrabah, and since king adam had outlawed magic, jordan had been heavily discouraged from teleporting the two of them home. they arrive at eleven on the dot, noses red from the snow, their bags dusted in a light coating of white. doug's papa opens the door, and grins widely.

“doug's here!” he calls into the house, and no sooner had doug and company stepped into the house than a small tornado in a yellow dress ran directly into aziz's knees.

“doug!!” she yells, in excitement. then, cocking her head, her eyes wide, continues. “you're not doug.”

aziz reaches down and ruffles her hair. “right you are,” he says, grinning the grin that doug recognized as his “charm the people and kiss babies” grin. “i'm aziz badroulbadour, prince of agrabah.”

she's silent for a moment, her arms folded against her chest, before sticking one hand out for a handshake. doug grins. papa, ever the diplomat and expert on human culture, must have taught her. “‘m dodie,” she says.

aziz shakes her hand, still grinning. “nice to meet you, dodie.”

dodie looks up at jordan after that. “who's that?” she asks doug, pointing at jordan.

“that's jordan,” he says. “she's my friend.”

dodie nods approvingly. “she's pretty,” she says, half-whispering, and doug can't help but laugh.

“hands off, kiddo,” he says, still laughing. “she's way too old for you.” doug can hear his fathers laughing in the background.

“maybe in twenty years,” jordan says, teasingly, and doug thinks he can even hear fadir laugh.

doug directs aziz and jordan to take their things to the spare bedroom, and watches as dad makes soup for lunch (it is winter, and dwarves do not tend to have a very mixed menu in the first place) and as he watches henry chase dodie around the kitchen. the light glints off her copper bracelets as the two of them play some sort of game with complicated rules that only four and a half year olds seem to understand, and as this occurs, his baba sets the table and chats.

“so, dougie,” he says. auntie snow may have called him bashful, but he only really was around new people he didn't know well; doug has never thought of him as shy. “it's good that dodie likes your friends.”

“it is?” doug says, half a question, half a statement.

“yes,” pupa chimes in from where he lies on the couch. in all honesty, doug had thought he was asleep. it tended to be a safe bet to assume he was, as he spent about sixty percent of his time sleeping on some piece of furniture that wasn't meant to be slept on (another twenty percent of his time went to sleeping on things that _were_ meant to be slept on). “she's always had good instincts. i'd trust her to judge your romantic partners accordingly.”

“i'm not dating aziz,” doug says, confusion furrowing his brow.

“why'd you bring him home then?” his tatah accuses.

“because king beast's got woodrot for a soul — ” he reaches down in a futile attempt to cover dodie's ears as he says this. saying someone had wood (and rotten wood at that) for a soul is one of the worst insults in dwarven vocabulary. “and won't let jordan teleport her and aziz home due to the magic ban.”

“whatever you say, sweetcakes,” dad signs from the table, where he'd been ladling soup into bowls. he couldn't hear, but he could lip-read, and he signed rather than try to speak. it was easier.

“i’m not dating aziz,” doug insists. “or jordan.” his baba raises an eyebrow, and doug frowns. 

“i’m _not_ ,” he insists, and then sighs. there is something he has to say. he’s had to say it for a long time, and now is a good a time as any. “i don’t think i’m like you, baba. i don’t want to have multiple partners, and i don’t want to date girls.”

his baba does not blink. pupa opens his eyes. “doug, we never expected you to have multiple partners. you’re not a dwarf, and it’s not something all humans do — queen rapunzel does, but that does not mean everyone can or wants to — and none of us has ever had a girl in this house, either.”

doug smiles. “i’m sorry. i just thought — since you loved girls before your clan vanished, that. that this made me wrong.”

“oh, sweetling,” aba says, coming into the kitchen with an armful of what doug thinks is laundry. he puts it down on one of the chairs, and then smiles at doug. “you’re not wrong. you never have been. you’re _you_.”

they hug him then, and the love in the room is almost palpable, and doug has never felt more warm. 

 

//

 

after winter break, doug has a realization. he likes chad charming. it’s not something he had ever thought about, but he just knows, somehow. it’s unfortunate for him, however, that he has this realization during a game of truth or dare with his friends. they've become a bit more of a friend group after winter break, and it consists of doug, jordan, jane, aziz, aziz’s two core-mates, tyrone, son of queen tiana and king naveen, with a twin sister named evangeline but whom everyone calls angie, and lonnie, daughter of chinese royal ambassadors li mulan and li shang, as well as a girl named ally jordan had met in detention (jordan had detention for doing magick on school grounds. her reasoning was her lamp held a pocket dimension, in which the laws of auradon did not apply. she and fairy godmother had gone head-to-head on this issue before fairy godmother finally backed down and allowed jordan to do magic in her lamp, though it was still strictly prohibited anywhere else on campus. this rule had worked about as well as a rule created to stop doug’s pupa from sleeping, that is to say, it had not worked at all, aside from making fairy godmother feel a bit better. ally had had detention for painting the walls of her room with a mural of wonderland). she seems a bit dreamy, but nice enough, doug thinks, and she and jane got along well, so that's another point in her favor. they’re hanging out in his and aziz’s room, doug and jane sitting on the floor, lonnie cross-legged on doug’s desk chair, aziz in his desk chair and jordan on his lap, ally sprawled on her back across doug’s bed, and tyrone sitting on aziz’s bed leaning against the wall. 

“truth,” ally says, and jane grins. there’s something about doing normal teenage things that makes her happy. as a fairy, and the daughter of a fairy godmother to boot, from what she’s told doug, she hadn’t had much of a normal childhood in terms of friends. she and doug are very similar in that way. 

“have you ever been to wonderland?” she asks, and ally shakes her head. 

“no,” she says. “mom’s too busy to have me come visit her. you know, with her position as chancellor, and all. she keeps saying someday, though.”

“you know that’s bullshit, right, ally?” lonnie says, fiddling with her hair. it was messy and wavy, the way it usually was when she’d gotten back from working out and she’d taken it down from her bun. lonnie had just gotten back from the gym before they’d ordered the pizza. the empty pizza box lies discarded on the floor. 

“rude much?” jordan asks, turning around to look at her and arching an eyebrow.

“i’m just telling the truth,” she says, shrugging innocently. “it's better to be honest than to avoid the subject completely.”

“didn't your mother lie about being a dude to join the army though?” tyrone asks, and lonnie sticks her tongue out at him. 

“small details,” she says, and turns to doug. “truth or dare?” 

“truth,” doug says, because he’s really comfortable and doesn’t feel like getting up to do some bullshit dare. he knows lonnie, and he knows she would dare him to do something like twenty push-ups, which he knows he can’t do, which is exactly why she’d dare him to do it. doug adores lonnie, he really does, but she has a tendency to be a piece of shit some of the time. 

“alright,” lonnie says, smirking. “who do you have a crush on?”

doug is silent for a moment. the first person to flash into his head is chad. which, despite his occasional (okay, a bit more than occasional) fantasies, hadn’t been what he expected. “chad charming,” he finally says, and jordan snorts. 

“really?” she says. “don’t you have better taste? straight girls don’t have any sense, and that’s what i expected from them, but doug?” she clicks her tongue judgmentally. “i expected better from you.”

doug crosses his arms defensively, as if to defend his position, but jane speaks before he can. “ _fuck_ chad charming,” she says, and hearing jane swear is a shock for everyone in the room. she’s not the type to swear much, let alone in english. she tends to revert back to the native language of fairies when she swears, so as to avoid being overheard by those who might get her in trouble (not that this would do her much good in terms of her mother, who as one might imagine, also speaks the native language of fairies). aziz and jordan do something similar, both reverting to arabic to swear when they worry someone might overhear and give them detention. doug tends to use human swear words, not knowing many dwarven ones (despite this, his dwarven vocabulary of insults is quite prolific, thanks to his fadir). lonnie tried to revert back to chinese to swear for a while, but found it too confusing to swear in chinese and say everything else in english. though, doug thinks, there was that one time she taught their entire chinese class every swear she knew when there was a substitute who’d forgotten the assignment and just wanted to nap. that was fun, doug muses.

“strong feelings you have there, janey,” jordan says. “care to explain?”

jane looks up, and doug can see what he thinks are tears shimmering in her eyes. “he was my best friend growing up. like my brother. and as soon as we got to secondary school, he ditched me for cooler friends.”

“dickhead,” lonnie mutters under her breath, and then, louder, says, “really, doug?”

“he’s cute,” doug says defensively. which is true. chad is pretty cute. it’s the hair, he thinks absentmindedly. chad has his mother’s hair. doug can see why king kittredge fell for her after only one dance.

“yeah. he’s like a labrador. pretty, but stupid,” aziz laughs. jordan snickers. jane sniffles but smiles through her tears.

“hey,” doug says, mock-hurt. he’s watched enough teen movies with jane on their movie nights to know how friends are supposed to act. he laughs along with his friends as ally mimics chad in their shared algebra i + ii class, fumbling about as though he has the answer, and there’s a warmth in his chest that feels almost like happiness. 

 

//

 

the summer before his sophomore year of high school is the longest one doug can remember. lonnie comes to stay with him for two weeks in july, and he loves having her around all the time, having someone to talk to that isn’t his dads (what can he say? he loves them, but there are just some things you don’t want to discuss with your fathers). even with greta’s (obvious) crush on lonnie, the summer goes well. but once lonnie leaves, it’s so long, not being able to talk to any of his friends. they have a group chat, but it’s just not the same, and when doug gets his supplies letter in the mail in mid-august, he almost collapses with joy. 

his core his sophomore year has one of rapunzel's twin daughters, anxelin, lonnie, a girl lonnie has a crush on named krista, who is either queen elsa of arendelle’s daughter or her sister's kid, and doug doesn't really want to ask — mostly because he's a sophomore and he's been at this school for a year already and there's only about sixty people in their class so he _should_ know them all — and chad. lonnie spends the entire first day of classes eyeing doug and chad. he even sits across from chad in lab, and lonnie spends the entire hour passing doug notes hinting that he should talk to him. doug refuses. at the end of the day, lonnie walks up to doug and slaps his books out of his hand.

“what was that for?” he asks, and she grins, a wide, shit-eating grin that doug recognizes as the same grin she has when she goes up against fairy godmother, and leans in and whispers.

“bend down and pick them up so chad sees your ass,” she says, and rolls her eyes when doug refuses. is this what girls do? doug wonders. no wonder straight boys are so whipped. she bends over to pick them up and then nods at krista, who raises her eyebrows and smirks, as doug takes his books back. 

he runs straight into chad as he's trying to leave. lonnie winks at him while doug sputters and apologizes. doug sighs. this is going to be a very long year. 

 

//

 

jane’s core their sophomore year consists of no one she knows. doug finds her after the second day of classes, alone in her room, her roommate out somewhere, and when she opens the door, her eyes are red and puffy. 

“what do you want?” she snaps, and doug moves to hug her, and jane reaches into his touch and almost melts. she wraps her arms around his neck and he rocks back and forth a bit. he gets the feeling jane hasn’t been hugged, _really_ hugged, in a long time, and he doesn’t want to pull away, doesn’t want to be the first to let go, and so he holds on.

“how’re you doing, janey?” he asks into her neck, and she pulls away, and doug can see a bit of his shirt is wet. he doesn’t mind, though. 

“shitty,” she answers honestly, and doug frowns. 

“give me your phone,” he says, and he scrolls through her music until he can find something that looks upbeat enough, and he turns it on, and turns it up, and then grabs jane’s hand. “come on,” he says. “let’s dance.”

“what?” she says, squirming. “why?” doug is dancing (not well, he admits, dwarves are not quite known for dancing, and doug is no exception, which is not helped with the added addition of longer, gawkier arms and legs). 

“it’ll be fun,” he says. “come on.” and jane does, she twists her hips and moves her legs in a sort of time and doesn't think about what she looks like and isn’t embarrassed at all, and her hair whips back and forth in front of her face and it’s _beautiful_ and doug thinks that if he wasn’t gay this is the moment where he would fall in love with her. he falls in love with her a little bit anyway, but not in that way, and then they start spinning and eventually end up falling on the floor laughing and jane pushes her hair out of her eyes. 

“thanks doug, i needed that,” and doug smiles. 

“i know,” he says, and jane smiles back.

 

//

 

sometimes, doug forgets his brother goes to school now here too. he sees henry in the halls, and it isn’t until they’re about a week in that henry confronts him. doug opens the door to his new dorm room (the only difference is it is slightly larger than last year’s, and further from the dining hall. sophomores don’t get many perks). 

“fairy godmother said you didn’t care that they only put dad on your paperwork,” he accuses, and doug blinks. 

“she’s the headmistress,” he says, simply. “i didn’t want to argue with her.”

“how does it feel to know everything about you in that file is a lie?” henry asks, voice bitter and eyes burning with anger. he glances downward and sees doug isn't wearing his bracelets, and his mouth gapes open. “you’re not wearing your bracelets?” he accuses again, tone full of shock.

“i — i take them off at school,” doug admits. he’d hoped henry wouldn’t find out. he thinks now that it was dumb to think he wouldn’t. “i couldn’t stand the way people treated me.”

“you’ve got woodrot for a soul, douglas,” henry snaps. 

“takes one to know one,” doug hisses, and he can’t believe he’s said it, but despite that, he keeps going. “you’re the one who's going to work with wood for the rest of your life.” henry's bracelets are made from silver, meaning he was destined to be a craftsman, and he has been carving trinkets and toys from wood since he was old enough to hold a knife. doug has a small ball henry had carved for his last birthday sitting on his bookshelf. it is a small ball, and when twisted to the left, it opened, revealing a small, circling merry-go-round carved perfectly out of wood.

“at least i’m not pretending to be something i’m not,” henry snaps, voice harsh. “at least i’m not you.” doug is silent at that, and henry’s face tightens into an angry, smug expression. 

“you know, just because others didn't understand us doesn’t mean you have to make yourself into what they think you are,” henry snaps, and turns and walks away. doug steps back into his room, shuts his door, and _weeps_. henry does not speak to doug again until winter break. after that, it is as though nothing had changed. doug thinks henry understands. at the very least, he's accepted it, which is enough for doug.

 

//

 

after winter break and spring break, and an exhausting load of schoolwork, the crown prince ben decides to hold an assembly. doug has heard his fathers’ comments on how a sixteen year old is going to be crowned, and they mostly consist of annoyed grumbling that a sixteen year old is going to be their king, because dwarves aren’t even considered adults until they’re at least sixty, and they’ll be damned if this human child (practically an infant to his fathers, really, who are all hundreds of years old) is going to be their king. but they don’t have much of a choice, and besides, auntie snow will be on his council and grunehold technically still falls within her kingdom’s borders, and she has the final say on what goes on inside her borders, so they are really only complaining for the sake of complaining, but doug digresses. 

prince ben stands up at the assembly and tells everyone that there will be four villain children coming over from the isle, and if all goes well, he will be bringing more over soon. the school is in outrage. doug does not tell his fathers that the child of the evil queen will soon be attending his school, but henry (that tattletale) does, and doug receives several care packages that all consist of survival gear, enchanted amulets and gems to help him survive in case of an attack. they also include several knives. doug puts most of the useful items in a box and shoves it in his closet, and throws the rest away, and aziz laughs. 

“my parents are totally down for jafar’s kid coming to school with us,” he says, watching as doug unwraps the third care package that week. “the way they see it, my dad would’ve been sent to the isle if he hadn’t been pardoned for all the khara he did before he married my mom. or if my mom wasn’t the sultana.”

“try telling that to everyone else’s parents,” doug says, thinking about the dozen or so kids who had been pulled out of school in the week or so it’s been since the announcement.

aziz shrugs. “it is what it is, man,” he says. “they either come here and kill us all, or they come here and nothing happens.” doug chuckles nervously, and hopes sincerely that it will be the latter. 

 

//

 

a week after the announcement goes up, someone with the username “magnolia” posts videos online of one of the lunch tables. the clips are all awful, painting everyone who was in them in a bad light, but, unusually, doug and his friends are almost absent from the videos. there’s some clips of doug tossing what was in one of his fathers’ care packages, selling band candy and working on the welcoming committee, and a clip of lonnie giving jane a quiz on where in auradon she should live, only for jane to get the isle, and another of lonnie moving someone’s bowl so he catapults his chopsticks across the cafeteria, and another of jane losing miserably at debate club, but there’s nothing awful, and aziz and jordan are nowhere to be found, and neither is krista or tyrone or ally. and then aziz runs the voice at the beginning through some modifier software (it was unnatural and robotic, so everyone knew it was modified), and it’s lonnie’s. aziz tells doug first, and the two of them take lonnie to the pizza joint they all frequent under the guise of a group hangout, but in reality, they have invited no one else, and it is just the three of them. 

“what are we doing here?” lonnie asks, confused. she snaps one of her hairbands around her wrist. “i thought you guys said the whole gang would be here.”

aziz leans in, overly dramatic, and doug thinks he’s seen too many spy movies, because this doesn’t deserve the level of drama aziz is putting into it. “we know you’re magnolia.”

lonnie flushes. “what was it? was it that my mom’s name means magnolia? was that too obvious? was it the fact that we were barely in it? i didn’t want to hurt you guys, but i had to expose what dickbags they were being, and — ”

aziz cuts her off, shrugging. “nope. i ran your voice through a voice mod. it wasn’t that hard.”

lonnie snaps her hairband against her wrist again. “oh.” her voice is dull.

“why’d you do it?” doug asks, unable to resist. “and can you take down the video of me? if my dads see that they’ll be upset, and i wouldn’t put it past my brother to show them.”

“nope,” lonnie says. “i can’t take that video of you down unless i take everything down, and i don’t think ben’s seen it yet, and i need him to know how fucking shitty his classmates are.” she straightens her jaw, and her voice is firm. she sounds determined, more so than doug has ever heard her before. 

“why? why does it matter how shitty they’re being? they can’t stop him,” aziz asks.

“because this is auradon, where “goodness doesn’t get any better,” except it does, and it can, and ben needs to know that. we all need to know that.” she snaps her hairband again.

“okay,” doug says. what lonnie is saying is fair, but he still doesn’t quite “get it”. “but why?”

“because i read through the transcripts of the council that voted on the isle. i read them and it took me hours but now i know. i know that every single one of our parents, our aunts and uncles, the heroes of the story — every single goddamned one — voted for the isle. they all decided that it was acceptable to put anyone who had even associated with a villain on the isle. there are innocent people on that isle, and they aren’t just the villain kids.” lonnie leaned back in her chair. “did you know that queen ella forgave anastasia? she and her husband lived in the palace with queen ella and queen ella recognized that anastasia was just as much a victim of her stepmother. can you guess where anastasia ended up?”

there’s a sinking feeling in doug’s stomach. “she got sent to the isle, didn’t she?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

“she did,” lonnie confirms. “and i read all the yearly reports from the isle, too, and she’s got at least one kid now. who by the looks of it, lost a heel to his grandmother. king _beast_ trapped a woman who’d been redeemed on the isle with her abusive mother and sister, and her husband chose to follow her, and her son grew up in trash, all because ben’s father can’t think in shades of grey.” lonnie’s tone shifts then, and softens, and then she says, “do you see now, doug?”

doug nods. it is all he can do.

 

//

 

the villain kids come over that week. nothing that anyone had done could have changed prince ben’s decree (not for a lack of trying), and they arrive. doug is part of the welcoming committee and the marching band, which audrey had insisted be there, so he is one of the first to see and meet the new kids. they seem like any other kid at the school (no horns or fangs like the rumors that had been going around) and aside from being dressed in an excessive amount of leather and having minimal manners, they don’t seem so bad. evie, the daughter of the evil queen, is gorgeous, and doug finds himself almost enthralled with her and he’s not even attracted to women, and he’s glad that he won’t see them anymore. he’s not exactly frightened of her, but he’s also not exactly comfortable around her, either.

and then it turns out she’s in his chemistry class. she spends the first class staring at chad, except when she’s called up to the board for a problem, and even when doug tries to warn her off, she seems remarkably determined that he’s the one. doug rolls his eyes and sighs, because she may be the evil queen’s daughter, but she deserves better than a boy who was two-timing half the princesses at the school, as lonnie / magnolia revealed. he doesn’t want anyone else to join him in having a crush on a guy who is kind of actually a piece of shit.

he reads the note over evie’s shoulder that tells her to meet chad under the bleachers, and he knows the rumors about what goes on down there, and he doesn’t want evie to get hurt (though, logically, he knows she’s the daughter of one of the most evil villains in the land and could probably defend herself if she had to, but he still worries for her) so he follows them, and it turns out that chad is just being his normal asshole self, convincing her to do his homework, and evie, weirdly, brings up the magic wand. but then chad leaves and doug decides it’s best to talk to her, which may or may not be the biggest mistake of his life and / or the mistake that gets him disowned, but he figures what’s he got to lose at this point? 

“are you stalking me?” evie asks, pulling her heart-box purse closer to her chest. 

“technically, yes,” doug says, and then goes right into it. “i, too, have a fascination with fairy godmother’s wand.” it’s a magickal item, and doug, being a sort-of dwarf, adores magical theory. he hates that they’re never allowed to see it in use, but the coronation is probably the closest he’ll ever get to actually seeing it used, assuming prince ben doesn’t get off his ass and reverse the already unpopular magic ban soon. “which is another reason i look forward to the coronation. perhaps we could sit next to each other and discuss its attributes?”

“are you telling me it’s used in the coronation?” evie giggles breathily, which is something doug had read about happening but never thought actually happened in real life, but here he is.

“yes,” doug says. “and asking you to hang out.” that last part is impulse, but he says it anyway, and evie, instead of responding, traces her finger across his collarbone, and walks away. hmm. doug watches her go and thinks that that went pretty well, all things considered. 

 

//

 

henry knocks on doug’s door after dinner, and aziz bounds up from his bed, where he’d been procrastinating on writing his chinese essay on the merits of the various translations of chinese legends by complaining about the fact that he had to write an essay on the merits of the various translations of chinese legends.

“you were hanging out with that villain kid,” henry accuses harshly, and aziz looks over his shoulder with a confused expression.

“um, doug, i think this one is for you,” aziz says, holding the door open so doug can see who's at the door.

“yeah,” doug says, getting up from his desk and walking over to the door. aziz moves away and flops back down on his bed, trying very hard to look as though he's not incredibly interested in what's happening. it's not working. “what do you want, henry?”

“you were hanging out with the _evil queen’s daughter_ ,” henry snaps, a tone of horror and shock in his voice. 

“yeah, i was, henry,” doug says slowly, confused. “she’s in my chem class, and i’m not allowed to help a girl out?”

“not when she’s a villian, douglas,” henry says, holding his magical theory i textbook to his chest as though it will shield him from doug (and, by extension, evie).

“she’s a villian _kid_ ,” doug hisses. “there’s a _difference_.”

“you’ll see, douglas,” henry snaps, before turning and walking away. doug shuts the door slowly, and aziz whistles low from his bed.

“damn,” he says. “someone’s in trouble.”

“hey aziz?” doug says, tone light, despite everything that just happened. “shut up.”

aziz laughs, and then returns to complaining about his essay. at least this one thing, doug muses, will never change.

 

//

 

in chemistry, chad turns evie and her magic mirror in for cheating, and doug doesn’t even know her that well, but he knows that that was a jerk move, and so he stands up and defends evie. chad seems so satisfied that he’s turned her in, and doug just wants to punch him in his smug, eyebrow raising face. and then maybe kiss him. what can he say? he doesn’t do either of these things, because evie passes, which is news she relays to him excitedly during the lunch period on the friday before family day, and they make plans to study together.

they meet in the library that evening, going over what she got wrong, and evie’s inching closer and closer, and doug is so nervous he just doesn’t know what to do, and so he ends up shouting “i’m gay!” quite loudly, to what he imagines is the disappointment of the librarian.

evie squints in confusion at him. “what?” she asks. her brow is furrowed.

doug takes a deep breath. “i don’t like girls, evie. i like guys. do they have a word for that on the isle?”

evie’s brow unfurrows. “oh,” she says. “no, there wasn’t really a word. we just kind of let people do what they wanted. i mean, let’s be honest, we all knew that harry hook was fucking gil and uma after mal broke his heart, and no one really cared that much, i mean, it’s not like i haven’t had the biggest crush on mal for basically ever, even though i _have_ to marry a prince or mother will never forgive me, and — ”

“wait, what?” doug asks. “you like girls? you like _mal_? do you even like chad?” he can see it now — evie was playing chad just as much as chad was playing him. it's a shame he didn't actually fall for her, he thinks. would've served him right. 

evie nods in what almost seems like shame. “i know i shouldn’t,” she says, and then shakes her head. “i don’t — ”

“woah, stop right there. you don’t have to date a prince to make your mom happy here. this is your own story, eves. your mom doesn’t make the rules here.”

“but she’ll be disappointed in me,” evie’s voice quivers, and she looks almost like she’s going to cry.

“fuck that,” doug says. “that’s woodrot, and you know it, and i know it, and you deserve to be with someone you love.”

there are tears slipping down evie’s cheeks now, and she smiles. “thank you, doug.” she leans over and kisses him on the cheek, and doug is crying now a little too, remembering when he came out to his parents.

“have you told anyone else?” he asks, and evie nods, absentmindedly fixing her makeup in her mirror. not that anything needed to be fixed, really, because it must be waterproof or something, but doug digresses.

“jay knows, and carlos too, but — but no one else.” doug squeezes her hand.

“thanks for telling me,” he says, and means it.

 

//

 

and then family day is here, and doug sings the dumb-as-shit song that audrey and ben organized together while they were still together (and maybe that’s why it went so badly, he thinks, because right now if audrey was a worse person she’d have leaked ben’s ugly selfies to the whole kingdom, but she’s not, so instead she just sabotaged their family day performance, which really was never going to great in the first place. now it’s at least so bad it's amusing). 

it turns out that he's not the only one whose parents didn't make it to family day (dwarven travel is notoriously slow, and they won't arrive until the coronation the next morning), and the other person isn't even henry, who isn't talking to doug again because he's friends with evie or something stupid like that, because lonnie's parents are too tied up in red tape and paperwork to make it before the coronation. which leaves lonnie and doug as the only people he knows as those without parents or some relatives (audrey's parents were busy, but her grandparents have come), and even sultana yasmin arranged it so she could come.

“hey! doug! lonnie!” someone calls, snapping doug from his thoughts. it's evie, and she's holding their campus dog and looks more excited than he's ever seen her. “come play croquet with us!”

doug looks at lonnie, and lonnie looks at doug, and he shrugs. “why not?” he says, quietly, and then, more loudly, says, “sure!”

they're about halfway through the game (evie is kicking both their asses, claiming this was way easier than the version she used to play with someone named “queenie”) when doug hears yelling.

“you!” someone calls, and doug looks up. it's audrey's grandmother, queen leah (though her husband was long dead and she'd long been overtaken with mild dementia, and although her daughter and king phillip ruled their kingdom, everyone still called her queen leah). “how are you here? and _how_ have you stayed so young?” she's addressing mal, who quite at the moment seems like she'd much rather be literally anywhere else.

ben walks over to her, trying to smooth the situation over. fairy godmother walks over too, seemingly on standby if something were to go wrong. “queen leah, it's okay,” ben says. “maleficent is still on the isle. this is her daughter, mal. don't you remember my proclamation to give the new generation a chance?”

lonnie is standing next to doug. “a chance to what, ben? destroy us?” queen leah accuses, and doug almost laughs, because words that sound like they could be coming from his brother's mouth are instead coming from the former queen of fiorenza. there's a thick feeling of tension in the air, and doug wants nothing more than to leave, because this is by far the worst family day he's been to, including last year's when his fathers let greta bring her axes and she was _this_ close to beheading tyrone's father (who, luckily, had been quite understanding about the whole incident). queen leah looks around her, almost pleadingly. “come on, you remember, don't you? the poison apples? and the _spells_?” she almost hisses the last word in disdain. “spells...my daughter was raised by fairies because of your mother's curse...so her first words, her first steps...i missed it all!” she is yelling by the end of it, and she turns away from mal, beginning to weep.

mal reaches out to queen leah, and doug can almost hear her say “i'm so — ” before she is cut off.

“stay away from her,” chad snaps, and doug wants to bury his face in his hands. there is absolutely zero percent chance this will end well.

“don't do this,” ben says, but that makes chad more angry, because apparently no one has ever told him no in his entire goddamn life, and it's at this point that doug knows that chad is going to ruin what was a perfectly fine afternoon.

“what?” chad snaps, staring at ben. “they were raised by their _parents_ , ben. what do you think villains teach their kids, huh? kindness? fair play? no way, okay, uh uh.” he looks around at the crowd beginning to gather, and then looks pointedly at mal. “you stole another girl's boyfriend,” he says, before stepping slightly over and pointing to jay. “you enjoy hurting people.” he fumbles for a minute, but can think of nothing to say about carlos, and then he sees evie and his face twists with what doug can only describe as utter disgust. “and you,” he sneers. “you're nothing but a gold digger and a cheater.” chad even has the fucking audacity to look back at doug after he says this, raising his eyebrows as though saying “don’t you agree?”.

evie's face turns stone cold, and doug's heart skips a beat. she's going to do something that will get herself sent back to the isle, he knows it, and his brother will be right, and he'll be down a friend and a pretty good chemistry study partner. “mirror, mirror, in my hand,” she hisses. “who's the biggest jerk in the land?” she points it then at chad, and chad sneers when it shows his own reflection.

“what? come on!” he exclaims, and tries to bat it out of evie's hand, and that is when the afternoon goes from bad to worse. the moment he lays his hand on evie, jay is moving towards him, ready to fight, and before they can truly get into it, evie sprays chad with something that looks like a bottle of perfume, but isn't, because he immediately collapses. which he completely deserves. doug thinks to himself, for neither the first or the last time, that he cannot, absolutely cannot, believe this is the boy he fell for. what a dumbass, he thinks.

lonnie pushes him behind chad when he falls, whispering “it’s super romantic if you’re there when he wakes up,” and doug cannot believe that that is on her mind right now. it’s certainly the least from doug’s. sure, he thinks chad is hot, but there are some (most, if he’s honest with himself) aspects of his personality that doug cannot stand.  
the villain kids take the commotion around chad to leave, because by the time chad has woken up and complained multiple times about what happened to him and how he has a headache, and doug gets a chance to look around for them, they're gone. audrey takes chad arm in arm to lay down, which doug is eighty percent sure is code for “go make out”. 

doug grabs lonnie's arm and takes her back to his room. there is absolutely no way that the afternoon could come back from this.

at dinner, doug walks over to explain (and to apologize on behalf of his ever terrible crush), but chad snaps at him as soon as he does, and he protests, but chad keeps calling his name, and the way evie whispers his name when she realizes he's going to listen to chad is heartbreaking, but if he doesn't, chad will go out of his way to make doug's life a shitshow for the rest of the school year, and possibly next year, too, and doug can't risk that, so he backs off. he doesn't look back at evie's disappointed face. he can't.

he watches as jane and audrey tease mal and then, all of a sudden, jane's head is being whipped around as though she's in her own personal hurricane and jane's new hair is gone. lonnie frantically touches her own curls in fright, but hers are fine. jane immediately begins crying, and when audrey confronts mal, mal threatens to curse them all and they all scatter off to the building like frightened mice. well, doug thinks, that certainly could've gone a little better.

 

//

 

when he gets back to the room, aziz is holding a bottle of arak. “that was one fun afternoon,” he says, with what doug is pretty sure is sarcasm. “want to call lonnie and jordan and jane and get drunk?”

“god yes,” doug says, because nothing is more appealing to him right now than the way alcohol makes everything feel less stressful.

aziz summons jane, lonnie and jordan, who brings a bottle of orange juice to mix it with (the first — and only — time doug had straight arak, he'd spent the rest of the night vomiting, and mixing it makes it taste a lot better anyways).

they're about two drinks in when lonnie starts laughing hysterically, her face bright red. “i jus — i jus think it's hilarious,” she slurs. “tha doug's got a crush on that asshole,” she chokes out in between peals of laughter.

“heeey,” doug protests lightly, sloshing his drink onto his comforter. “he's preeeety.” jordan snaps her fingers and the drink reappears in his glass. doug puts his glass down and sends jordan finger guns. jordan recrosses her legs and rolls her eyes, and doug laughs.

jane giggles. she's floating about an inch of the ground, which is some fairy bullshit thing that happens when she drinks, and doug's drunk enough that he can't remember the science behind it. “you're pretty,” she tells lonnie, and lonnie reaches up to play with jane's hair. jane giggles again, and doug can see lonnie's ears are red.

jordan snorts. “keep it in the bedroom,” she says. doug thinks she sounds surprisingly sober.

aziz cackles. “hey, janey, do you think your new friends would like you now?” he asks teasingly. he means nothing by it, jane herself admitted earlier (albeit when they were more sober) that she'd just wanted to feel like she was liked. she'd just wanted to be someone that everyone noticed for something good, rather than someone who was remembered because she'd fucked up her speech in mass comm again, and they'd reassured her that they always noticed her. doug always noticed her.

jane looks aziz dead in the eyes. “fuuuuck em,” she says seriously, and that makes lonnie laugh again, and then doug is laughing, and he falls off the bed.

“doug? you good?” someone (probably jordan, he thinks, based on how not-drunk the voice sounds).

“mmhmm,” doug says, looking up at his ceiling. it's boring up there. he should decorate it. “jane, your new friends called, they want your hair back.”

“heeey,” she protests. “i liiiiked the hair. they can have it,” jane protests, and then she takes another swig of arak. she's not one for frilly drinks.

“don't you mean they can't have it?” lonnie asks, and the two of them dissolve into laughter again.

“hey,” aziz says suddenly, from his seat on his bed. “i can't waaait for carnation — coro, uh,” he pauses, trying to remember the ending to the word.

“coronation,” doug supplies, from the floor. their ceiling is still terribly boring. they really gotta decorate.

“‘cause it's gonna be a show with that bin'nt himaar in the front,” aziz finishes his thought.

jordan hits aziz lightly with his chinese textbook. “don't be rude, ghabi,” she snaps, and doug suddenly remembers why she sounds so not-drunk. he's pretty sure she said she'd stay not drunk and keep the rest of them out of trouble. which is unnecessary. doug is never in _trouble_. 

“kool khaaaaaraaaa,” aziz slurs, and jordan rolls her eyes, before snapping her fingers and disappearing off the bed and reappearing on aziz's desk chair.

“she's ben's giiiirlfriend,” lonnie says, and jane giggles again. “what's so funny?”

“benny-boo has a giiiiirlfriend,” jane chokes out, and they all burst out laughing at audrey's pet name for her ex. it's somehow even funnier now, and doug's heart feels warm as he takes another sip of his drink. he's lucky to have friends like these, he thinks, watching jane try to braid lonnie's hair and laugh when it only gets tangled instead. he really is.

 

//

 

doug wakes up the next morning only slightly hungover. aziz squints at the sunlight streaming in through the windows as the alarm goes off. 

“morning,” doug says, and aziz groans. “pain meds?” doug asks, but aziz is already on his phone, texting jordan, who he presumably wants to magic away his hangover. doug gets up and starts looking for the red velvet suit he'd gone out and bought with lonnie and jordan as his fashion advisers a few weeks ago. he finds it hanging in his closet and by the time he's mostly dressed, aziz is crawling out of bed. 

“toss me the meds,” he says, and doug does.

“what, jordan refuse to magic away your hangover?” doug asks, smirking. 

“you don't have to look so happy about it,” aziz grumbles, after downing the pills. “she said something about me “having to live with the consequences of my actions.”” he puts his water down on his desk and goes to dig around in his closet before pulling out an turquoise suit. 

doug snorts at that. “imagine that,” he says, and aziz pulls on his shirt and then pauses to make an obscene gesture at doug. doug laughs again and is pulling on his suit jacket when there's a knock at the door. 

doug crosses the room, and opens it to find lonnie at the door. “'sup?” she says, and doug holds the door open for her to enter. her dress is a pale peach and inspired by chinese formal dresses, though it isn't exactly one itself. 

“you look nice,” aziz says, pausing tying his tie to kiss lonnie's hand. 

“aziz badroulbadour, you charmer,” lonnie says accusingly, and aziz smirks. 

“that's me,” he says as lonnie uses his mirror to reapply her lipstick. doug watches as she snaps a photo of herself to send to krista. 

there's another knock at the door, and doug finishes tying his shoes and gets up to get it. jane stands at the door, and she grins, looking exhausted. “ready to go?” she asks, and offers her arm. 

doug takes it. “you know i am,” he says.

 

//

 

ben walks in to the chapel hall, and everyone melts. his parents stand up as ben walks down to the place he will be crowned, and everyone bows. fairy godmother stands up and kisses queen belle on the cheek as ben kneels, and then she takes the crown from king adam. she places the crown on ben's head, and then she starts talking, and doug can only hope this will be a short ceremony because he can see aziz standing with his parents across the isle and he looks like he's about to keel over. not to mention doug himself has a little bit of a headache (the choir is not really helping), and then jane is gone, and doug can only see that she's taken the wand from her mother. the wand is sparking and bucking in jane's grip. 

“child, what are you doing?” jane's mother screams, a look of horror and mortification on her face. 

“if you won't make me beautiful, i'll do it myself!” jane screams, and doug wonders exactly how much of this was because of last night. no one makes good choices while slightly hungover, and while jane hadn’t seemed to mind as they’d laughed about her bid to be one of the cool ones last night, he feels awful. and as doug watches, mal wrests the wand out of jane's hand, and the room goes silent. jane rushes back into the crowd, and lonnie, who'd been standing in front of doug since this whole ordeal began, pushes jane behind her. doug feels safer with lonnie in front of him, because if he’s honest, doug has seen lonnie bench press much more than his own weight, and fully believes she’ll hold her own, and then he realizes that even lonnie isn’t a match for mal and her magic and this is probably where he dies and the part he hates about it the most is the fact that his little brother was right.

“mal,” ben says soothingly, hand out in front of him like baba trying to calm their frightened pony. doug wants to laugh, and desperately tries to suppress it. “give me the wand.”

“stand back,” mal spits, and doug can see fear and desperation in her eyes. ben moves closer, and the other villian kids burst in through the door. “ben, i said stand back!” mal yells.

audrey, unable to resist the urge to tell everyone she's right (doug loves the girl, but her timing could use a little work), snaps, “i told you so!” and mal turns the wand towards her and everyone around her gasps. doug hadn't thought that coronation could be any worse than family day. he'd been so very wrong. 

“let's go,” carlos says quietly. 

“revenge time,” jay mutters, with a dark expression doug can't quite read. 

“you really want to do this?” ben asks, an incredulous look on his face. 

“we have no choice, ben,” mal screams, desperate and afraid. there is something about her right now that makes her seem like a frightened, cornered animal, ready to bite whatever hand comes towards it, even if it was only bringing food. “our parents — ” 

“your parents made their choice. now you make yours,” ben says, still calm. there is silence in the room as everyone waits to see what they will do. 

after what is possibly the longest twenty seconds of doug's life, mal lowers the wand. “i think i want to be good,” she says softly, so softly doug can almost not hear her. 

“you are good,” ben says, calmly, patiently, and mal's face twists with fear again. 

“how do you know that?” mal screams. 

“because... because i'm listening to my heart,” ben says, smiling gently. 

“i want to listen to my heart, too,” mal says, softly, quietly, almost vunerably, and then turns to look at her friends. “and my heart is telling me that we are not our parents,”she pauses, crying a little, and looks directly at jay. “i mean, stealing things doesn't make you happy. tourney and victory pizza with the team makes you happy.” jay nods, crying a little, and then mal turns to carlos. “and you, scratching dude's belly makes you happy. who would've thought?” she laughs a little, and carlos does too, albiet more nervously. and then mal turns to evie, who is already tearing up. “and evie...you do not have to play dumb to get a guy. you are _so_ smart,” evie cries a little at this, and doug does too, because it's true, she's one of the smartest people he's ever met and the thought of her playing dumb to get a boy makes his heart hurt a little bit.  
“and i don't want to take over the world with evil. it doesn't make me happy. i want to go to school. and be with ben. because ben makes me really happy. us being friends makes me really happy. not destroying things. i choose good, you guys,” she says, and holds out her hand for the rest of them to take. 

“i choose good, too,” jay says, smiling. 

“i choose good,” evie sniffles a little, and doug has never, ever been more proud of her. 

“so, just to be clear,” carlos says, still apprehensive. “we don't have to be worried about how really mad our parents will be? because they're gonna be really, really mad.”

“your parents can't reach you here,” ben says, and carlos smiles. 

“okay then. good,” he proclaims. and then there is green smoke and a sickening cackle and then maleficent is standing in front of them. 

“i'm baaack,” she cackles, and demands mal hand her the wand, but mal refuses, and then there’s a flash of sickly green magic and the next moment maleficent is a lizard. doug doesn't know what happened in the middle, but whatever it is it's good enough for him. the villian kids truly are good. 

he spends the after party ben planned at the school dancing mostly with evie, who laughs at how bad he is but keeps dancing with him anyways. the last dance she saves for mal, and the love in her eyes is so apparent doug can’t see how mal doesn’t already know. either way, it’s sweet, and doug is somehow really glad that the villain kids came to auradon.

 

//

 

doug gets breakfast with jane the next day. it’s awkward at first, but they overcome it quickly. the dining hall around them is nearly empty, and doug chalks that up to kids who are last minute packing for break. he and jane both finished packing over a week ago.

“so, what’s the punishment this time?” doug asks, pushing the sugar over to jane’s side of the table. she smiles, taking it and putting what doug would personally consider far too many spoonfuls of sugar in anything into her mug. “community service?”

“no, actually,” jane says, surprise in her tone as she pours cream into her tea. “i’m getting a single next year, and i have to go to weekly counseling sessions, and i’m getting an emotional support dragon. they looked at my actions and decided that it was motivated by anxiety and a shitty self esteem, and you can’t fix that with community service,” she ends with a bit of a laugh.

“an emotional support dragon?” doug asks, and jane nods, taking a bit of her toast before continuing. (she has toast with blackberry jam on it, and earl grey tea, which is her favorite breakfast. doug has a frosted donut and black coffee).

“yeah, one of the small ones, to help me when i have anxiety attacks, and with the whole, you know, empath thing. and in case my core next year doesn’t have anyone i know.”

“sounds solid, janey,” doug says, and then leans in, as though he’s about to whisper a secret. “if you don’t skype me as soon as you get it, i am unfriending you.” he stares at her intensely as he takes a bite of his donut, and jane laughs.

“i will, i promise,” she says, and then, after another bite of toast, says, “i missed you, doug.”

doug squeezes her hand. “i missed you too, jane.”

 

//

 

doug arrives at his fathers’ home at eleven on the dot, suitcases and henry and evie in tow. he’s nervous about bringing the daughter of the woman who tried to kill them home, but they all saw what evie did at the coronation, and he hopes that will be enough. it hasn’t been for henry, but henry takes more after their fadir than he ever did the father listed on his paperwork (which wasn’t even his correct name. they’d written happy on henry’s paperwork the same way they’d written dopey on doug’s). he knocks, and his tatah opens the door and sneezes (it is pollen season).

“doug! henry!” he exclaims, hugging them and then pulling their suitcases inside. once this is done, he looks at evie. “and you must be — ” he pauses here to sneeze again “ — evie. it’s lovely to meet you, darling. you can have the attic, give your things to greta there, she can take them up,” evie tries to protest handing all her bags to a thirteen year old girl, but tatah is having none of it “no, no, dear, she’s stronger than she looks, her bracelets are titanium and her hobby is throwing axes, she would love to, darling, don’t worry about it,” and then he pulls evie in for a hug.

“welcome to the family,” papa says, and doug smiles, because he’d known that things would change as soon as the announcement was made, but he hadn’t thought they’d change this much. he absentmindedly touches his bracelets and there’s a whisper deep in his soul that tells him that he won't take them off again.


End file.
